Part 5 (2/2)
The form in which taboo manifests itself has the greatest similarity to the touching phobia of neurotics, the _Delire de toucher_. As a matter of fact this neurosis is regularly concerned with the prohibition of s.e.xual touching and psychoa.n.a.lysis has quite generally shown that the motive power which is deflected and displaced in the neurosis is of s.e.xual origin. In taboo the forbidden contact has evidently not only s.e.xual significance but rather the more, general one of attack, of acquisition and of personal a.s.sertion. If it is prohibited to touch the chief or something that was in contact with him it means that an inhibition should be imposed upon the same impulse which on other occasions expresses itself in suspicious surveillance of the chief and even in physical ill-treatment of him before his coronation (see above).
_Thus the preponderance of s.e.xual components of the impulse over the social components is the determining factor of the neurosis._ But the social impulses themselves came into being through the union of egotistical and erotic components into special ent.i.ties.
From this single example of a comparison between taboo and compulsion neurosis it is already possible to guess the relation between individual forms of the neurosis and the creations of culture, and in what respect the study of the psychology of the neurosis is important for the understanding of the development of culture.
In one way the neuroses show a striking and far-reaching correspondence with the great social productions of art, religion and philosophy, while again they seem like distortions of them. We may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature of a religion, and a paranoic delusion, a caricature of a philosophic system. In the last a.n.a.lysis this deviation goes back to the fact that the neuroses are asocial formations; they seek to accomplish by private means what arose in society through collective labour. In a.n.a.lysing the impulse of the neuroses one learns that motive powers of s.e.xual origin exercise the determining influence in them, while the corresponding cultural creations rest upon social impulses and on such as have issued from the combination of egotistical and s.e.xual components. It seems that the s.e.xual need is not capable of uniting men in the same way as the demands of self preservation; s.e.xual satisfaction is in the first place the private concern of the individual.
Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis springs from its original tendency to flee from a dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable world of phantasy. This real world which neurotics shun is dominated by the society of human beings and by the inst.i.tutions created by them; the estrangement from reality is at the same time a withdrawal from human companions.h.i.+p.
CHAPTER III
ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
1
It is a necessary defect of studies which seek to apply the point of view of psychoa.n.a.lysis to the mental sciences that they cannot do justice to either subject. They therefore confine themselves to the role of incentives and make suggestions to the expert which he should take into consideration in his work. This defect will make itself felt most strongly in an essay such as this which tries to treat of the enormous sphere called animism[90].
Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of psychic concepts, and in the wider sense, of spiritual beings in general. Animatism, the animation theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further subdivision which also includes animatism and animism. The name animism, formerly applied to a definite philosophic system, seems to have acquired its present meaning through E. B. Tylor[91].
What led to the formulation of these names is the insight into the very remarkable conceptions of nature and the world of those primitive races known to us from history and from our own times. These races populate the world with a mult.i.tude of spiritual beings which are benevolent or malevolent to them, and attribute the causation of natural processes to these spirits and demons; they also consider that not only animals and plants, but inanimate things as well are animated by them. A third and perhaps the most important part of this primitive 'nature philosophy'
seems far less striking to us because we ourselves are not yet far enough removed from it, though we have greatly limited the existence of spirits and to-day explain the processes of nature by the a.s.sumption of impersonal physical forces. For primitive people believe in a similar 'animation' of human individuals as well. Human beings have souls which can leave their habitation and enter into other beings; these souls are the bearers of spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent, independent of the 'bodies'. Originally souls were thought of as being very similar to individuals; only in the course of a long evolution did they lose their material character and attain a high degree of 'spiritualization'[92].
Most authors incline to the a.s.sumption that these soul conceptions are the original nucleus of the animistic system, that spirits merely correspond to souls that have become independent, and that the souls of animals, plants and things were formed after the a.n.a.logy of human souls.
How did primitive people come to the peculiarly dualistic fundamental conceptions on which this animistic system rests? Through the observation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep (with dreams) and death which resemble sleep, and through the effort to explain these conditions, which affect each individual so intimately. Above all, the problem of death must have become the starting point of the formation of the theory. To primitive man the continuation of life--immortality--would be self-evident. The conception of death is something accepted later, and only with hesitation, for even to us it is still devoid of content and unrealizable. Very likely discussions have taken place over the part which may have been played by other observations and experiences in the formation of the fundamental animistic conceptions such as dream imagery, shadows and reflections, but these have led to no conclusion[93].
If primitive man reacted to the phenomena that stimulated his reflection with the formation of conceptions of the soul, and then transferred these to objects of the outer world, his att.i.tude will be judged to be quite natural and in no way mysterious. In view of the fact that animistic conceptions have been shown to be similar among the most varied races and in all periods, Wundt states that these ”are the necessary psychological product of the myth-forming consciousness, and primitive animism may be looked upon as the spiritual expression of man's natural state in so far as this is at all accessible to our observation”[94]. Hume has already justified the animation of the inanimate in his _Natural History of Religions_, where he said: ”There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted and of which they are intimately conscious”[95].
Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a single phenomenon, but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of the world from one point, as a continuity. Writers maintain that in the course of time three such systems of thought, three great world systems came into being: the animistic (mythological), the religious, and the scientific. Of these animism, the first system is perhaps the most consistent and the most exhaustive, and the one which explains the nature of the world in its entirety. This first world system, of mankind is now a psychological theory. It would go beyond our scope to show how much of it can still be demonstrated in the life of to-day, either as a worthless survival in the form of superst.i.tion, or in living form, as the foundation of our language, our belief, and our philosophy.
It is in reference to the successive stages of these three world systems that we say that animism in itself was not yet a religion but contained the prerequisites from which religions were later formed. It is also evident that myths are based upon animistic foundations, but the detailed relation of myths to animism seem unexplained in some essential points.
2
Our psychoa.n.a.lytic work will begin at a different point. It must not be a.s.sumed that mankind came to create its first world system through a purely speculative thirst for knowledge. The practical need of mastering the world must have contributed to this effort. We are therefore not astonished to learn that something else went hand in hand with the animistic system, namely the elaboration of directions for making oneself master of men, animals and things, as well as of their spirits.
S. Reinach[96] wants to call these directions, which are known under the names of 'sorcery and magic', the strategy of animism; With Mauss and Hubert, I should prefer to compare them to a technique[97].
Can the conceptions of sorcery and magic be separated? It can be done if we are willing on our own authority to put ourselves above the vagaries of linguistic usage. Then sorcery is essentially the art of influencing spirits by treating them like people under the same circ.u.mstances, that is to say by appeasing them, reconciling them, making them more favourably disposed to one, by intimidating them, by depriving them of their power and by making them subject to one's will; all that is accomplished through the same methods that have been found effective with living people. Magic, however, is something else; it does not essentially concern itself with spirits, and uses special means, not the ordinary psychological method. We can easily guess that magic is the earlier and the more important part of animistic technique, for among the means with which spirits are to be treated there are also found the magic kind[98], and magic is also applied where spiritualization of nature has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished.
Magic must serve the most varied purposes. It must subject the processes of nature to the will of man, protect the individual against enemies and dangers, and give him the power to injure his enemies. But the principles on whose a.s.sumptions the magic activity is based, or rather the principle of magic, is so evident that it was recognized by all authors. If we may take the opinion of E. B. Tylor at its face value it can be most tersely expressed in his words: ”mistaking an ideal connection for a real one”. We shall explain this characteristic in the case of two groups of magic acts.
One of the most widespread magic procedures for injuring an enemy consists of making an effigy of him out of any kind of material. The likeness counts for little, in fact any object may be 'named' as his image. Whatever is subsequently done to this image will also happen to the hated prototype; thus if the effigy has been injured in any place he will be afflicted by a disease in the corresponding part of the body.
This same magic technique, instead of being used for private enmity can also be employed for pious purposes and can thus be used to aid the G.o.ds against evil demons. I quote Frazer[99]: ”Every night when the sun-G.o.d Ra in ancient Egypt sank to his home in the glowing west he was a.s.sailed by hosts of demons under the leaders.h.i.+p of the archfiend Apepi. All night long he fought them, and sometimes by day the powers of darkness sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian sky to obscure his light and weaken his power. To aid the sun-G.o.d in this daily struggle, a ceremony was daily performed in his temple at Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi, represented as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent with many coils, was made of wax, and on it the demon's name was written in green ink. Wrapt in a papyrus case, on which another likeness of Apepi had been drawn in green ink, the figure was then tied up with black hair, spat upon, hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground. There the priest trod on it with his left foot again and again, and then burned it in a fire made of a certain plant or gra.s.s. When Apepi himself had thus been effectively disposed of, waxen effigies of each of his principle demons, and of their fathers, mothers, and children, were made and burnt in the same way. The service accompanied by the recitation of certain prescribed spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon and night, but whenever a storm was raging or heavy rain had set in, or black clouds were stealing across the sky to hide the sun's bright disk. The fiends of darkness, clouds and rain, felt the injury inflicted on their images as if it had been done to themselves; they pa.s.sed away, at least for a time, and the beneficent sun-G.o.d shone out triumphant once more”[100].
There is a great ma.s.s of magic actions which show a similar motivation, but I shall lay stress upon only two, which have always played a great role among primitive races and which have been partly preserved in the myths and cults of higher stages of evolution: the art of causing rain and fruitfulness by magic. Rain is produced by magic means, by imitating it, and perhaps also by imitating the clouds and storm which produce it.
It looks as if they wanted to 'play rain'. The Ainos of j.a.pan, for instance, make rain by pouring out water through a big sieve, while others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as if it were a s.h.i.+p, which is then dragged about the village and gardens. But the fruitfulness of the soil was a.s.sured by magic means by showing it the spectacle of human s.e.xual intercourse. To cite one out of many examples; in some part of Java, the peasants used to go out into the fields at night for s.e.xual intercourse when the rice was about to blossom in order to stimulate the rice to fruitfulness through their example[101]. At the same time it was feared that proscribed incestuous relations.h.i.+ps would stimulate the soil to grow weeds and render it unfruitful[102].
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